Conventionally, in response to a submitted user query, a server may acquire a set of query results from a service search engine or a database according to a combination of service conditions and then display the acquired query results to the user. The most common method of display is to paginate the query results and send the query results to the user's browser. Displaying query results across one or more pages is not only user friendly, but can also increase speed of returning query results. In addition, paginating query results can also lead to increased page browsing and advertisement exposure for the same quantity of information. In displaying query results in paginated form, a desired quantity of query results to display is predetermined for each page of query results.
At some websites, a query result is to meet one or more display conditions before it can be displayed at a query results page. Put another way, a query result that does not meet the one or more display conditions is not displayed at a query results page. Conventionally, a query result that is determined to be relevant to a search query is retrieved and then evaluated for whether it meets the one or more display conditions. For example, a query result comprises a set of product information. To generate query results for a page, a quantity of sets of product information that match a search query equal to the desired quantity of query results to display per page is retrieved. In this example, a display condition is that a set of product information must include at least three images of the corresponding product. In some instances, not all the attributes of a set of product information are indexed and as such, the set of query results was not filtered for only the query results that match the display conditions at the time that they were searched. Therefore, the retrieved sets of product information for the search query may include at least some sets of product information that do not meet the display condition of having at least three images of the product. However, the sets of product information that do not meet the display condition cannot be presented at a page of query results and are therefore eliminated as query results. Another display condition is that a set of product information must pass a security authentication and those sets of product information that do not pass the security authentication cannot be presented at a page of query results and are therefore discarded as query results. If at least some of the retrieved sets of product information do not match a display condition and therefore cannot be displayed at the query results page, then fewer than the desired quantity of query results can be displayed at the query results page.
For example, a desired quantity of query results to display per page is set to 50 query results. If among the 50 query results that are found to be displayed at a search results page, it is determined that five of such query results do not meet display conditions, then only 45 query results can be displayed at the search results page. However, 45 query results are fewer than the desired quantity of 50 query results to display per page. One conventional approach to solve this problem is to replace the eliminated query results with blank space. While this approach is relatively simple, presenting blank spaces at a query results page may provide a poor user experience, waste display resources, and lower system efficiency.
Another conventional approach to solve this problem is to perform a supplemental search and thus sequentially locate a quantity of new query results equal to the quantity that was eliminated for not meeting the display condition(s) and then merge the new query results with the previously found query results that met the display condition(s), thus bringing the total quantity of request results up to the desired quantity. However, in this approach, some of the new query results retrieved using the supplemental query can fail to meet the display condition(s). It would then be necessary to perform another one or more supplemental searches until the number of retrieved query results that meet display requirements reaches exactly the desired quantity. It is often necessary with such an approach to conduct multiple supplemental searches before being able to obtain the desired quantity of query results to display that meet the display condition(s). As such, this second approach is inefficient and slow.